FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) was founded in 1989 to inspire an appreciation of science and technology in young people, their schools and their communities. Based in Manchester, N.H., the non-profit organization designs accessible, innovative programs to build self-confidence, knowledge, and life-skills while motivating young people to pursue opportunities in science, technology, and engineering. With the support of many of the world's best-known companies, FIRST hosts the FIRST Robotics Competition for high school students and the FIRST LEGO™ League for children 9-14 years old. For more information about FIRST, please see www.usfirst.org.
The FIRST Robotics Competition provides high school students the opportunity to work alongside professional engineers to design and build robots from a kit of parts to participate in a specific game that changes from year to year. Student teams work with corporate sponsors, colleges, and other professional mentors to compete in regional competitions leading up to the annual championship competition. The FIRST Robotics Competition, however, is about a lot more than robots. Although the pressure and excitement of the competition is intense, FIRST motivates the players to know their competitors, make friends with them, and even help them out. FIRST calls this an environment of “gracious professionalism.”
Since its inception, FIRST has impacted hundreds of thousands of young people and continued to expand its reach every year. For example, in 2003, approximately 700 corporations provided sponsorship and career opportunities to the approximately 25,000 young people who participated in the FIRST Robotics Competition that year. More than 35 Universities offered more than $3.8 million in scholarships to these participants. With the significant success and growth of FIRST in general and the FIRST Robotics Competition in particular, comes the need to foster the spirit of gracious professionalism to an ever increasing group of participates, sponsors, and volunteers. While gracious professionalism is the very sole of FIRST, it would be helpful to design the annual FIRST Robotics Competition game, and any other competition where a spirit of cooperation is desired, so that the rules of the game itself foster this spirit of gracious professionalism. The FIRST Robotics Competition game over the years has structured the competition so that the teams work in changing groups (called alliances) against other groups of teams. This rotating alliance structure fosters a spirit of gracious professionalism, because an opponent in one round may be a partner in the next. While this alliance structure contributes to gracious professionalism, what is needed is a method and system for scoring such competitions to create a coopertition.